I don't know if this is common behaviour in the wild or if breeders who keep all birds in one flight have seen this before but I found out something, go have a look!



3 birds in one nestbox... Makes me wonder if this is all Pumba...

Some birds like having a threesome. As long as they aren't attacking the new co-parent, it's fine. I love how they aren't biting you even though they aren't psyched you intruding.

Carolyn's birds have had threesomes. None of mine did though.

lol, I've seen both your posts, guess I'm learning... At least I'm no longer worried all 10 eggs come from the same hen.

I do have a problem figuring out who mommy is now.
Carolyn will know this without looking at the genetic calculator. But I'll have to see what I can get out of the two hens with pumba as dad.
I expect there will be some chicks that could very well be of both without any way of knowing for sure (without doing DNA tests...)

First couple of times I checked with a glove on. But they didn't seem to mind all that much. Sure there is some protest as you can see and hear. But I haven't been bitten once!

EDIT: (and then I'm not taking into account what non-visual genetic stones all of them might have!! I'm tottally freaked out again)

I'm not going to put this in the budgie section, even though in the end I am looking at them :-)

Me checking (most) nestboxes!

Awww so tiny too!
Thank you for showing them !

Timon and The Swedish Chef's nest box... 90 minutes of footage to get this little video of actual 'action'.

This was edited with the gopro software. Still haven't tried the windows movie maker. All I did was cut away the boring bits and glued the rest back together.

Enjoy!

The three birds in the cardboard nestbox are your birds, aren't they? Dad is whiteface and one of the hens is whiteface, so all the babies from that pair will be whiteface too. The pearl hen is not whiteface, so any chicks that are not whiteface will definitely be her children.

The big question is whether the pearl hen is split to whiteface or not. If she is, then it's expected that half of her babies will be whiteface. But this is a statistical average, not something that's guaranteed to happen in every clutch. We also don't know how many eggs each hen laid - maybe each one laid five eggs, or maybe it was six and four or some other number.

If you get 7 or 8 whiteface babies and two non-whiteface, there's a high probability that the pearl hen is split whiteface and you can't be too sure about which hen is the mother of a specific whiteface chick. If you get five whiteface and five non-whiteface, it seems likely that she is not split and you can easily tell which chick came from which mother. If you get six whiteface and four non-WF it's a lot more uncertain.

Whiteface chicks can be identified as soon as they hatch because they have white down. Non-whiteface chicks have yellow down.

I knew you would get the numbers without even looking at that genetic calculator! Thanks a lot. I did get the numbers right for the pearl not being split. It did my head in if she would be though. I kind of hope she isn't split to whiteface.

We'll find out!

If she's not split to whiteface, then all her children from this pairing will be split whiteface, having gotten the gene from their father. All the boys will get the pearl gene the gene from her.

More of the cockatiel Cam: